This application claims priority of provisional patent application No. 60,697,416, filed Jul. 8, 2005.
There are numerous inventions and discoveries relating to methods for folding sheets of material. Some of these methods relate to forming a three dimensional shape from a two dimensional sheet. Other methods take this a step further in that they provide for a folding and unfolding process that is smooth and continuous. One might term this second type “reversible origami”.
A critical inventive component of such methods are various tiling patterns that may be scored into sheets of material. One of the most famous of these patterns is “Miura-Ori” (“ori” being the Japanese term for folding)—named after its inventor Professor Koryo Miura, from Tokyo University. This particular pattern, consisting of a grid of parallelograms, allows for a sheet of material to be compacted down in two dimensions.
Also known in the art are various patterns including those disclosed in my own U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,234,727 and 4,981,732. These disclosures relate to novel shapes that may be developed from a sheet of material, which may then be smoothly folded down to compact bundles.
Such methods have numerous uses for foldable structures and products, including sails, tents, and novel packaging.
In general, these methods require sheets of material whose thickness is very minor when compared to their planar extent. To the degree that the sheet has a thickness of any significance, it is generally required that its material have flexibility and compressibility in order to allow folding to occur.
However, this requirement for flexibility results in significant limitations with regards to the provision of foldable forms requiring a high degree of structural rigidity. Applications that require rigidity include any large-scale structures, as well as products such as foldable furniture, boxes, or foldable dividers.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide foldable forms with a high degree of structural rigidity in which the sheets thereof can have significant thickness.